A/N: I just want to take a moment again, to thank everyone who has left a review, favorited, and followed this story so far! You guys light up my life, thank you so much for your support! :) Enjoy the next chapter!


Chapter Seven

Despite Klara's report to the All-Mother on Loki's condition and request for better sleeping arrangements, the requisitions were slow in coming. Klara filled the intervening days learning her new duties as the head of Lady Frigga's household, and always, the bright white walls and flickering golden lights of the dungeon glimmered in the corner of her mind's eye, flashes of long, dark hair and haunted, weary eyes.

Her mind was so occupied that Andvari's absence did not trouble her thoughts quite as much as perhaps it should have. He was a good soldier, she knew he would be safe, but there was always the slim chance he wouldn't return. This should have worried her, but instead she could not help but hope that during this separation perhaps he might come to see her new duties as a privilege, not a punishment.

The effects of Lord Loki's sleep deprivation soon began to make themselves painfully apparent. His eating habits would marginally improve, only to wane again a few days later. He soon became nearly lethargic, sometimes not even bothering to lift himself from the floor when she approached, sitting near his haphazard pile of books, his back to the bright white wall of his cell, merely leaning back to allow the biolocks to click into place. The dark, sunken circles beneath his eyes seemed permanent now, his hair lank and starting to curl where before it had always been sleek and smooth. His skin was thin as paper, so thin Klara thought she might see right through it if she only stared long enough, and more often than not she left his cell carrying a tray laden with barely touched foods. He ate enough to keep himself alive, it seemed, but little more. He was erratic (more than usual) and quick to anger (again, more than usual). Klara frequently left his presence seething, only to realize shortly afterward that the words he had spoken had not really made any sense. He had just been shouting to shout at her. Somehow this always made her feel a bit vindicated, lending her the poise she needed to return to the cell with a stony expression and cold demeanor that was often no longer necessary. He would be slow, lethargic, and apathetic once more.

The queen's expression grew more and more disturbed with each report, but there was little she could do. Odin All-Father had apparently gotten wise to his wife's schemes and was now actively blocking her requests in regards to the prisoner. Klara feared that if Lady Frigga pushed too hard, too fast, the king might even ban her own entrance to the dungeons in a fit of righteous indignation. This fear was never as apparent as when Klara entered the royal sitting quarters and unintentionally overheard the raised voices of the king and queen echoing against the tiles.

"I did not know when you sentenced him to imprisonment that it was only a much longer, crueler death sentence," Lady Frigga snapped, her voice freezing Klara in her tracks, "I might have just let you kill him and be done with it."

"You treat him like a child that needs to be nurtured!" Lord Odin shouted, "He is grown now, Frigga! You cannot protect him from the person he has become! He has done this to himself!"

"I don't believe that!" Frigga shouted back, "You've seen him, Odin! Is that the boy we raised? Is that the man we sent into the realms to protect our people? Is that the son you knew? Something happened to him out there!"

"He would not have been out there were it not for his own stubborn pride and foolish ambition!" Odin countered, "This is of his own making!"

"But it's not!" Lady Frigga insisted, "You are the one who planted that ambition, when you thought that he might...!"

"Enough."

The word was cold and sharp, and Klara flinched, her heart pounding in her throat.

"You will stop this foolishness at once," the king said, his voice quiet, but insistent, "He is not your son. He is no longer an errant child to be coddled and catered to. He is a prisoner, a traitor to the realms we are sworn to protect. That is the end of it."

Klara withdrew into the shadow of the archway just as Lord Odin stormed out of the queen's chambers, keeping her head down, her eyes firmly on the ground, hands clasped behind her, using everything that Elli had taught her to appear as small and unobtrusive as possible. She held her breath as the king passed and did not let it out again until his footsteps had faded down the long corridor. She leaned back into the corner and closed her eyes, her head throbbing. There would be no more requisitions. What did this mean for her, for her position? She had not been mentioned, but her constant attention to the prisoner was certainly one of the 'coddling' actions that were meant to cease.

Klara steeled her heart and her expression before she slipped into the queen's quarters, intentionally making a bit of noise picking up a bowl of fruit and setting it back onto its tray.

"Klara?" the queen's voice called from her office, "Is that you?"

"Yes, my lady."

Klara straightened her tunic and strode into the softly lit room. Lady Frigga was sitting at her desk, pen in hand, no hint of the argument on her face save for a more determined set to her jaw and a gleaming, sly look in her eye. Klara loved the queen a little then and it took every ounce of her self-control not to smile.

"Is there anything I can do for you, my lady?"

"Yes," the queen said shortly, swiveling back to her desk, "Yes, as a matter of fact there is."

She scribbled a note onto a sheet of parchment and folded it up, handing it to Klara.

"I want you to go into my son's room and strip his bedding."

Klara blinked.

"But... doesn't Lord Thor have his own..."

She trailed off. Lady Frigga was grinning like a cat that has a mouse trapped in a corner... and the mouse has not yet realized it. Klara saw Loki in that expression and it was strangely unsettling.

"No," Lady Frigga said, her blue eyes glinting, "Not that son."


Klara was amazed at the superb simplicity of it all. She wasn't certain it would work, it was so little really, but when she thought of Loki's haunted eyes and gaunt face, she realized that she was willing to try anything, anything to make this torture cease. What horrors must plague his mind, that he could not quiet himself for even an hour's rest? Surely, even for crimes such as his, it was too cruel.

She hesitated before the black carven door, a door that had not been opened in more than a year. It loomed over her, a great barrier that seemed to suck in all light that touched it, trapping it, never to be seen again. The carving in the center of the door showed the curved ram's horns, the fallen prince's symbol worn on his golden ceremonial helm. Two snakes twined together in the branches of the world tree in the background, and a wolf lay at its roots. It was an elaborate picture, though Klara could not begin to fathom its meaning.

Her hand reached for the curved handle, carved of black shining onyx. Until now, she had always felt certain that this door would be locked, ever since the great betrayal of its occupant. But as she turned the cool stone in her palm, the latch clicked and the door swung open smoothly on well-oiled hinges. For a moment, Klara lingered in the hallway, staring uselessly into the shadows beyond the threshold. Then she straightened her spine, set her jaw, and stepped through the door.

There was no light beyond what filtered in behind her from the hallway. Klara blinked and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Several shapeless forms loomed out of the dark and for a moment she froze, unsure of what she was seeing. But as her eyes adjusted further, the shapeless forms became sheet-covered bits of furniture. She fumbled for a moment in the doorway, searching for a light of some kind, and found a lamp, but when she searched for a knob or switch to light it she found nothing, only smooth metal. Magic. She took her hand back in a sort of angry disgust. Everything in this room would probably reek of magic, if she could sense it in any way. Which she couldn't.

She clenched her jaw and took another determined step forward. More pale, shapeless forms appeared, but she didn't flinch away. She could see a path now, crossed by her own shadow, a path cut through a layer of thin dust on the floor where things had been moved recently. Her mind flashed to the prison cell, to the settee and the desk that she had brought the prince as consolations. So, the room had not been as deserted and shunned as she'd supposed.

She ventured in further, not daring to remove the covers from the items she found, but shrewdly guessing at the contents, a lounge chair here, a long, low sitting table there. She came upon what looked to be a straight-backed chair and a small table set together under a thin sheet and thought back to her planned requisition for something to set the prince's meals on. Would anyone even notice if she just... She brushed a hand against the gray sheet, and a light flutter of dust puffed into the air and coated her fingers. Her nose twitched and she stepped back, narrowly suppressing the urge to sneeze. No, she dared not try to move anything here on her own.

As she moved deeper into the large sitting room, the light from the door grew fainter and fainter at her back, but her eyes adjusted and she could see the far right wall coming slowly into view. A dark rectangle cut the wall and she had nearly run into it before she realized it was another black door, this one simply carved with smooth clean lines that seemed to aid in the sucking in of light. She touched the dark wood and it slipped away from her, opening silently onto a yawning blackness that even her rapidly adjusting sight could not penetrate. She took a step inside the unlit room.

She was enveloped in darkness for only a moment, staring into the emptiness. Then gradually, a dim light began to rise in the smallest of increments, brightening the room around her with a soft golden glow. A movement detector, she thought. One of the few devices she could use, since all movement was detectable, even hers. The glow lifted the shadows, but it could do nothing for the gloom which seemed to cling to every surface of this place like a film. There were more sheets covering shapeless objects, a large blank portion of one corner that had been recently disturbed (perhaps the desk had come from here) and on the far wall, square, plain, and uncovered, the outline of a bed.

It was unadorned and simple, not the elaborate four-poster monstrosity that she had been picturing in her mind. Low to the ground, gently curved legs of dark wood, dressed in rich greens and gold, all covered in a thin layer of gray dust. Klara stepped toward it and the light brightened marginally. The same smell that filled her nose when she entered Loki's prison, that stale, lonely smell, was lingering in her nose. It clung to the room like cobwebs, like the dust that covered the furniture and floors. Perhaps it lived in the dust. Perhaps it lived only in her mind.

Klara shook away these thoughts and turned up her sleeves. There were many things to see to before dinner was served.


It took a full day for the laundries to beat over a year's worth of dust out of the bedclothes, but by the next morning Klara found herself carrying, not just her usual breakfast tray, but also an armful of soft green linens and a well-worn woven blanket, depicting a white wolf curled upon a black background.

Lord Loki sat curled in his usual position on the floor, close to his stack of books, one in his lap that he clearly wasn't reading. His dull eyes stared blankly somewhere into the middle distance, his face smooth, expressionless. He jerked when he heard her approach and the constant illusion he kept in his cell these days floated away with his loss of concentration. He sat up a bit straighter and at least made an effort at appearing nonchalant. He even grinned.

"Ah, Mistress Klara," he said, his once smooth, silky voice slightly hoarse, "What have you...?"

He paused and his brow furrowed, his eyes fixed on the bundle in her arms.

"What is that?" he whispered, his voice a badly controlled mixture of desperation and disbelief.

"Linens, my lord," Klara said, her voice gentle and kind, despite herself, "The Lady Frigga thought these might bring you some comfort."

His eyes remained fixed upon the bedclothes, his brow still furrowed, head slightly tilted, as if trying to work out whether he were about to be tricked or trapped in some way. Klara waited, feeling a swell of patience that she knew would not have been possible for her even a few weeks ago. But a few weeks ago he had not needed patience. A few weeks ago his mind would have been seven steps ahead of hers, working out what path she would take before she had made even a single step.

A few weeks ago he hadn't been dying.

Finally, still looking slightly perplexed, Loki leaned back against the wall and allowed Klara to engage the biolocks. She stepped through the golden barrier with practiced ease and approached his desk. She had yet to see anything written on it since she'd brought it in, but it worked very well as a place to relieve her burdens. She set down the breakfast tray (lefse, which had been clearly decided as Loki's favorite meal, he always ate at least one full cake), and then set to work draping the bedclothes over the settee. They were too big, of course, but she managed to tuck away the edges efficiently enough. She had managed to bring along an extra pillow and placed it at the head of the couch. Then with a quick flick of her arms she spread the wolf blanket, smoothing it neatly with her hand, and stepped back, hands on her hips, to survey her work with a smug sense of satisfaction. It looked much more like a place to be slept in now. She bent for last night's supper tray...

...and caught Loki staring at her. His eyes were wide, but his expression was blank, too blank, the face of a man concealing his thoughts but far too tired to replace them with something else. She stopped and stared at him too, some of the pity she had been trying to suppress welling up inside her.

He was once a prince...

He was once a son...

She quickly straightened, tray in hand, and hurried out of the cell before he could catch some glimpse of what she was feeling. He would be so angry if he caught even a hint, and she did not want to ruin this day with anger. She schooled her features carefully as she released the biolocks, then turned back just as he was slowly getting to his feet. He ignored the tray on his desk (which she had forgotten to uncover in her haste to escape), and instead shuffled toward the bed, his eyes fixed very decidedly on the woven wolf. He reached out a thin hand, trembling slightly, and brushed his fingers over the white creature.

"Mother..." he whispered, almost reverently.

Klara froze, barely daring to breathe. She had never heard him speak of Lady Frigga with anything less than contempt. To hear this... Something inside her warmed and she tried desperately to tamp it down. She clenched her jaw and tightened her grip on the tray in her hands, a bowl of stew trembling upon it that looked as if it hadn't even been touched. Her heart ached and she hated herself for it. Loki only continued to stare at the blanket, fingers tracing the pattern absently, his eyes very far away.

Not willing to break this moment, Klara curtsied very softly, only to herself, and slipped away, speaking not a word, only daring to stride at a normal pace when she was well away from the bright golden glow of the cell.


Loki realized, in a snap of clear-headedness, that he had completely forgotten about the girl, standing just beyond his cell, waiting, as she always did, for her dismissal. But when he finally set his features and turned his head, he found that she had gone. For a moment he thought perhaps she had just moved out of his line of sight, and he turned this way and that, trying to locate her. But she was no longer in the dungeon. It was strange, but not strange enough to merit any more than a moment of his precious concentration. He closed his eyes and focused, managing to conjure his doppelganger once more, though not able to make him do more than sit and stare at a book, not even turning pages, just reading the same words over and over again. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He could smell the faint hint of lefse coming from under the cover of the breakfast tray. The smell meant almost nothing to him, but he knew that he must eat. The girl's voice echoed in his mind, as it did on an almost constant loop these days.

What good are you... to yourself or to anyone... if you are dead?

The girl might be an insufferable annoyance, but he could admit that she had a point. If he died here, Odin would get exactly what he wanted, for Loki to spend the rest of his life in this cell. But if he lived... Well, life was full of endless possibilities.

He stared again at the blanket now covering the settee, trying to move himself in the direction of the food on his desk. The wolf was bright and stark against the black background. It looked just as it had the day he had been given it, nearly a thousand years ago, when he had moved from the nursery to his own rooms in the royal wing. He could still remember Mother's face as she had spread it across his new bed and smoothed it down, as Klara had done only a few moments before.

'She will keep you safe,' she had said, 'A wolf always looks after her pups. No matter where they are.'

Suddenly he felt a white hot burst of rage and he tore the blanket back, flinging it crumpled to the foot of the couch. Keep him safe? When had he ever been safe, a monster among gods, an impostor in his own home? When had she ever...?

A stab of pain pierced his head and he shut his eyes against the light that was suddenly far too bright. He sagged, but there was nothing to catch him and he nearly stumbled. He could feel his doppelganger flickering and he pressed all his concentration to it until it settled again. He was too tired for this.

He turned from the now untidy bedclothes and walked with a deliberately slow step toward the desk. He settled himself on the accompanying stool, lifted the tray cover, and methodically began to eat. He consumed one mouthful of lefse after another until he could not stomach the thought of even one more bite. He looked down. He had barely touched half of one cake, three more still steaming on the plate. He carefully covered them again and pushed the tray back on the desk before making his slow, deliberate way to the back wall, intentionally ignoring the settee in the periphery of his vision. He approached the haphazard stack of books and picked one at random. Of course it was the one on the top of the pile, and so it was the same book he had been reading for days. Or rather just staring at. Lately, his mind was too erratic for reading, his thoughts like little flocks of birds whizzing about his brain, never settling in one place.

He curled up in the corner and opened the brown leather cover to a random passage, staring at the words, watching them swim in strange configurations against the parchment.

Something was hovering just out of his line of sight. He told himself it was nothing, but after only a few moments his nerves could stand it no longer and he jerked his head up irritably.

It was only the settee. The splash of rich green where there had once been only dark red was like an eyesore, drawing his attention like a moth to flame. He tried to ignore it, unwilling to approach the source of his irrational fury, to give it the satisfaction of knowing that he could do nothing to vex it or harm it in any way. But it was no good. The bright swath of color irked him to the point of boiling rage. He slammed his book shut and tossed it rather violently toward the others, sending the precarious stack toppling further into the corner. A few of the spines bounced along the golden barrier and he jumped, which only made him more furious. He flew to his feet with more strength and speed than he had believed he possessed, and stormed toward the offensive furnishing. But once he was there that piercing pain lanced through his head again and he stumbled, flinging out a hand to catch himself, but there was nothing to support him. He ended up half sprawled on the couch, the pillow brushing the top of his head, his feet still dangling just a few inches from the floor, his eyes screwed shut against the horrific light that was stabbing his skull like a searing knife. He curled inward and tried to breathe. The pain finally subsided, but he did not dare open his eyes again. It was enough that he could still breathe. He lay there, as still as possible, just breathing and waiting for the lights to dim...

The laugh echoed in his mind, the dark, rumbling laugh. He sat bolt upright, panic flooding every atom of his being, but he was not in the cell in Asgard. He was among the cold, hard stars, and the asteroid rock formations were biting into the skin of his back, the metal of his restraints cutting deep, round shapes into his wrists where they hung above him, and he felt the searing PAIN lash through him like a thousand, sharp, thin swords, into his body, into his mind. The Other, the one that served The One, was speaking in that high, raspy voice that came from everywhere and nowhere.

"There is no realm... where he cannot find you..."

The low rumbling laugh echoed again and pain sliced him open, cutting him from the inside...

"Stop."

the girl. The voice of the girl, so clear, so present that he opened his eyes to find her, but there was only...

...a wolf. A great white wolf standing before him, her hackles raised, a growl rumbling in her chest. And Loki heard another voice, a voice from long ago, soft and gentle and always kind.

"A wolf always looks after her pups... No matter where they are..."

"Mother..." he whispered hoarsely.

The wolf snarled. And then she leapt into the dark with a vicious snap of her jaws, and as Loki whirled through this haze of shadow and nightmares, whenever it felt as if the pain would overwhelm him, the girl's voice, Klara's voice, called out of the void and the wolf was there.

She was always there.